Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 23, 2013

In fact, most of the rich entrepreneurs you know actively turned away early equity proposals. Too many founders are convinced they “need” equity financing, for the wrong reasons, as outlined in the book and supplemented with a bit of my own experience: Need employees and professional services. You need a prototype.

Bootstrapping 252

Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Entrepreneur Technical Review 252

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 8, 2015

Every startup founder loves to prompt for questions from investors and potential key team members about their vision, and the huge opportunity that can be had with their disruptive technology. Most founders like to talk about their many months or years of sweat-equity , but cash invested is a stronger commitment.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Due Diligence Sweat Equity Burn Rate 120

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

In fact, most of the rich entrepreneurs you know actively turned away early equity proposals. Too many founders are convinced they “need” equity financing, for the wrong reasons, as outlined in the book and supplemented with a bit of my own experience: Need employees and professional services. You need a prototype.

Sweat Equity 255

Sweat Equity Technical Review Entrepreneur Bootstrapping 255

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

In fact, most of the rich entrepreneurs you know actively turned away early equity proposals. Too many founders are convinced they “need” equity financing, for the wrong reasons, as outlined in the book and supplemented with a bit of my own experience: Need employees and professional services. You need a prototype.

Sweat Equity 239

Sweat Equity Technical Review Bootstrapping Equity 239

Gust

DECEMBER 15, 2013

In fact, most of the rich entrepreneurs you know actively turned away early equity proposals. Too many founders are convinced they “need” equity financing, for the wrong reasons, as outlined in the book and supplemented with a bit of my own experience: Need employees and professional services. You need a prototype.

Bootstrapping 183

Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Entrepreneur Technical Review 183

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Deciding whether to increase money or trade equity in the business for much needed assistance, could be a tough call. I raised money and traded equity, but with my venture, I had to make one of the toughest decisions, to build it with some assistance of co-founders. Find the right co-founders.

Cofounder 124

Cofounder Sweat Equity Equity Dilution 124

David Teten

MARCH 9, 2021

We love founder(s) who can say any of the following: Mindset . Being a founder is not for the faint of heart. One or more of our past coworkers are joining us in this new business, and working for sweat equity.”. Even if it’s not in a business arena–e.g., you ran a mile in 4:30–this shows ambition and focus.

Sweat Equity 78

Sweat Equity Equity Metrics Demand 78

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 20, 2014

A successful business has to satisfy customers with a strong team, by helping them solve problems, save money, or experience more pleasure. Many entrepreneurs are able to come up with a vision, but far fewer are able to hold on to it through thick and thin, and communicate it effectively and continuously to their team and their customers.

Leadership 258

Leadership Sweat Equity Bootstrapping Early Stage 258

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 16, 2013

If you really want to impress a startup founder as a potential employee, or you want to be a smart investor, you need to know the right questions to ask. These are the questions that get past the hype of a founder “vision to change the world,” and into the realm of real business strengths, weaknesses, and current health.

Due Diligence 253

Due Diligence Sweat Equity Intellectual Property Burn Rate 253

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

If you really want to impress a startup founder as a potential employee, or you want to be a smart investor, you need to know the right questions to ask. These are the questions that get past the hype of a founder “vision to change the world,” and into the realm of real business strengths, weaknesses, and current health.

Due Diligence 244

Due Diligence Sweat Equity Burn Rate Intellectual Property 244

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 5, 2011

If you really want to impress a startup founder as a potential employee, or you want to be a smart investor, you need to know the right questions to ask. These are the questions that get past the hype of a founder “vision to change the world,” and into the realm of real business strengths, weaknesses, and current health.

Due Diligence 237

Due Diligence Sweat Equity Intellectual Property Entrepreneur 237

Business Plan Blog

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

Milestones That Friends, Family, and Founders Care About Before Investing. Investors at any stage like to see that you have committed personal funds in addition to sweat equity. You likely will not be in a position to achieve the ideal form of market validation: paying customers. Personal Investment. Market Validation.

Sweat Equity 71

Sweat Equity Founder Cofounder Valuation 71

Austin Startup

JANUARY 30, 2020

The relationship between a founder and their startup is a unique one?—?we’re We made it from nothing, built it up with sweat equity, do everything in our means to make this thing grow, and wait to see what happens. We didn’t have the exuberance of first time founders in the first year of their business?—?we

Sweat Equity 63

Sweat Equity B2B B2C Business Model 63

Gust

DECEMBER 8, 2013

If you really want to impress a startup founder as a potential employee, or you want to be a smart investor, you need to know the right questions to ask. These are the questions that get past the hype of a founder “vision to change the world,” and into the realm of real business strengths, weaknesses, and current health.

Due Diligence 174

Due Diligence Sweat Equity Intellectual Property Burn Rate 174

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

Investors want to hear about customers with money who have a painful problem that you can solve now. Investors are looking for a concise description of your product or service without technical jargon or fuzzy marketing terms with value quantified in customer terms. Quantify founder investments, both cash and sweat-equity.

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Advisory Board Liquidity Event Startup 120

Up and Running

JUNE 23, 2015

Meg Wirth and Allyson Cote, founders of Maternova. I was fortunate enough to speak with co-founder Allyson Cote, and hear the Maternova story, as well as some of its exciting plans for the future. “It took an enormous investment of sweat equity on both our parts,” Allyson admits.

Cofounder 60

Cofounder Sweat Equity Social Media Business Model 60

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 20, 2010

If you really want to impress a startup founder as a potential employee, or you want to be a smart investor, you need to know the right questions to ask. These are the questions that get past the hype of a founder "vision to change the world,” and into the realm of real business strengths, weaknesses, and current health.

Due Diligence 229

Due Diligence Sweat Equity Intellectual Property Startup 229

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 12, 2016

by Anand Srinivasan, founder of LeadJoint.com. Founders need to work on a ‘compartmentalization strategy’ that breaks down their business dream into small components that can be smaller business ideas by themselves. In the early stages of business, sweat equity can often be a good substitute for cash.

Cofounder 100

Cofounder Sweat Equity Startup Seed Capital 100

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 5, 2010

This is a guest post by Mike Schoeffler, founder of iPhone running application Roadbud. As founder of a run/bike app startup, I can write off my workouts. I have a ready excuse for squeezing in a little “sweat equity” — I need to get in shape to know my customers’ issues.

Sweat Equity 208

Sweat Equity Startup Viral Equity 208

Up and Running

DECEMBER 23, 2019

Sweat Equity. “I Your first proof of concept can be done without a technical co-founder or a lot of money. Rather than wasting energy chasing alternative sources of funding, start selling your product to customers and slowly grow your company using generated revenue. Inexpensive Freelance Labor. 0% APR Credit Cards.

Finance 92

Finance Sweat Equity Bootstrapping Entrepreneur 92

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2011

By John Williams Fast Company magazine recently reported that PayPal founder Paul Thiel is giving away $100,000 to twenty-four young men and women to finance startup businesses. Businesses can be built on sweat equity. Ask satisfied customers to spread the word on yelp, tripadvisor, Angieslist, etc.,

Sweat Equity 231

Sweat Equity Startup Angel Investor Seed Money 231

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

– The company also needs the hustle to get stuff done and find the first few customers. – Don’t compromise on quality for co-founders and other permanent decisions. And that includes the choice of co-founder. Yet founders want to move fast and there is an inevitable tension between speed and quality.

Sweat Equity 60

Sweat Equity Cofounder Angel Investor eCommerce 60

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

For startup founders, it’s never too early to start thinking about putting together a target market advisory board. This is useful for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is to help you navigate the right channels in your vertical and open doors to potential customers. Never discount the power of a warm intro.

Advisory Board 48

Advisory Board Sweat Equity Marketing Vertical 48

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Then we ship it to customers way before it’s ready. Mike Arsenault and his two co-founders—all with technical backgrounds—built their MVP while working full time for other SaaS companies. “We We didn’t spend any real cash prior to getting our first paying customer,” recounts Arsenault. “I’ll Qualified.io

Sweat Equity 78

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 78

Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

An entrepreneur starts a company in classic " bootstrap " fashion - with a combination of sweat equity and their own financial resources. The typical wisdom regarding the appropriate financing course for a new company goes as follows: 1. But here is the key – contrary to popular wisdom it is negatively correlated.

Angel Investor 112

Angel Investor Venture Capital Sweat Equity Cram Down 112

Scott Edward Walker

JUNE 23, 2011

Introduction I love working with startups – and trying to protect founders and watch their backs. Indeed, in a world of easy access to online documents, it is often this legal compliance which is overlooked by founders, as they attempt to stay “lean” and “scrappy” (and sometimes even handle the legal work themselves or through a web service).

Accredited Investor 82

Accredited Investor Sweat Equity Los Angeles Finder 82

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Then we ship it to customers way before it’s ready. Mike Arsenault and his two co-founders—all with technical backgrounds—built their MVP while working full time for other SaaS companies. “We We didn’t spend any real cash prior to getting our first paying customer,” recounts Arsenault. “I’ll Qualified.io

Sweat Equity 50

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 50

grasshopperherder.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Q: “What will be your best channel for customer acquisition?&# How many customers have you spoken to? If you’re waiting for a technical co-founder to put up a landing page with signup form, you’re lazy. I just need a co-founder to web enable it!" Names redacted.) A: “I don’t know.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder NDA Founder Sweat Equity 47

grasshopperherder.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Piercing the Corporate Veil – Sweat Equity Consulting. « Thanks but No Thanks – Things to Avoid When Recruiting Co-founders Why is Cyber Squatter a Bad Word? But much like becoming a co-founder, getting paid sweat equity is essentially becoming an investor in the company. Jan 20 -->.

Sweat Equity 41

Sweat Equity Equity Cofounder Non-Compete 41

www.virtuosimedia.com

MARCH 8, 2012

Custom Programming. This article should also serve as a starting guide for programmers who are approached about becoming technical co-founders. It’s simply an untenable situation to expect the technical co-founder to assume the full burden of risk through sweat equity. Businesses. Business Articles.

Technical Cofounder 41

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Technical Review NDA 41

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Tracking such revenue can be a challenge but is possible to approximate the revenue impact of PR activities via the use of unique URLs, customer surveys, etc. Any function within your startup that involves iterative learning, passion and/or close proximity to your customers should not be outsourced. Passion Cannot be Outsourced.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder PR 40

Ben's Blog

JUNE 29, 2010

A great Founder/CEO: Dennis Crowley. Years and years of research and sweat equity went into cracking the code, and the results are magical. Here are the three reasons we invested. We prefer founding CEOs. A gigantic market. At a macro level, over 4.6B people have mobile phones and there are 1.7B people on the Internet.

Sweat Equity 78

Sweat Equity Portfolio New York Leadership 78

Austin Startup

JUNE 26, 2019

Many people have reached out sharing knowing and kind words about our journey and choice to wind down our venture, as well as their appreciation for my choice to pull back the curtain on what is statistically a common road for many founders. It details a landscape founders like me are excited to sink their teeth into? Of course not!

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup B2C Sweat Equity 54

grasshopper.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Getting Paid in Equity: A What to Do Guide. Equity-based pay is often used by the founders of young start-ups who want to grow their businesses but cannot offer big salaries to qualified professionals. Sweat Equity Or Equity With Compensation? Customer Spotlights. How it Works. Pricing & Signup.

Equity 41

Equity Vesting Sweat Equity Salary 41

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 24, 2019

She is the co-founder and CEO of the Grommet and author of How We Make Stuff Now. Really doing everything you can to shape and quantify the potential customers for your product and getting beyond talking to your friends and family who will all tell you your product’s a great idea. So Jules, thanks for joining me.

Product 61

Product Sweat Equity Naming SEO 61

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

After a thorough analysis of those 32 start-up post-mortems, we have determined the common reasons founders gave to compile this list of the top 20 ways to have your startup fail. By way of crude example, if your building innovative trading software for Wall Street, be where you customers are and where you can best network.

Cofounder 89

Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 89

Up and Running

JUNE 26, 2017

Our founders thought, “Why is it so hard to actually get ahold of someone at a business? So several months and a lot of mistakes later, we pivoted to helping small businesses get and keep more customers. Mark Cuban has famously said, “Sweat equity is the best startup capital.” Where will you find your first customers?

Sweat Equity 145

Sweat Equity Business Plan Naming eCommerce 145